2005-02-23

Is this the first Onion article with product placement? Or just the first one to combine egregious unfunniness with an absolutely stone-cold straight plug and link to the sponsor, making the deal obvious?

The unfunniness might be due to overzealous sponsor-end editing rather than authorial ineptitude, but that just highlights the problem. I don't begrudge the Onion the right to make a living somehow. The ads all over their pages are A-OK with me. I don't even have a problem with in-article product placement, in principle. But when, in practice, it comes out by-committee pap that isn't even mildly amusing, it's worthless as entertainment and backfires as advertising. D'oh.

Oh, I remember that Ben and Jerry's thing about the new flavor. That was so lame I didn't even read to the end. Heineken I don't remember, probably cause it made such a lame impression. Ah well... as Cicero said, "sic semper libero stuffo on internetum". Well, we'll always have the early print collections.

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A blog about Japanese language, literature, culture, and art by Matt Treyvaud. (More)